Creative commons confusion

olias

I am researching images to use on a website I will be developing soon. There are a number of images I wish to use that are on Flickr which state they are available under a creative commons attribution license (for commercial use and can be altered etc), however despite lots of googling, I can't find a simple explanation of exactly how this is done and am running round in circles. The CC license itself states this:


Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).


However I can't find anything on the Flickr page of any particular image or on the photographers profile to state what this manner is!

In addition, the Flickr site mentions HTML coding and photo links, available when you click 'share this' above the photo - but this button on all the photos I have looked at appears to be inactive.

In addition it mentions using links back to Flickr etc etc, yet you can just download the photo in a range of sizes depending on your need. Can I just download these images and use them provided I put 'photographer: J Bloggs' underneath it?

The creative commons FAQ states the following:

How do I properly attribute a Creative Commons licensed work?

All current CC licenses require that you attribute the original author(s). If the copyright holder has not specified any particular way to attribute them, this does not mean that you do not have to give attribution. It simply means that you will have to give attribution to the best of your ability with the information you do have. Generally speaking, this implies five things:

• If the work itself contains any copyright notices placed there by the copyright holder, you must leave those notices intact, or reproduce them in a way that is reasonable to the medium in which you are re-publishing the work.

• Cite the author's name, screen name, user identification, etc. If you are publishing on the Internet, it is nice to link that name to the person's profile page, if such a page exists.

• Cite the work's title or name, if such a thing exists. If you are publishing on the Internet, it is nice to link the name or title directly to the original work.

• Cite the specific CC license the work is under. If you are publishing on the Internet, it is nice if the license citation links to the license on the CC website.

• If you are making a derivative work or adaptation, in addition to the above, you need to identify that your work is a derivative work i.e., “This is a Finnish translation of the [original work] by [author].” or “Screenplay based on [original work] by [author].”

Surely you aren't expected to put all this under every photo I use on my website? Can the attribution etc be hidden in the code somehow or does it actually have to appear on the website page itself. If it can be hidden in the code then how?

As you can see, I am completely confused about what is actually required can anyone shed any light and give a very simple explanation as to how I use a cc licensed image on my website. Thanks.

Olias

DVardysShadow

The attribution should not be hidden as I understand it. The FAQ is reasonably explicit. While I can see that you don't want to have attribution text, there really is no get out from doing it. And no get out from having it somehow visible to the user from the browser. You could consider using the Hover method to render the information in a tooltip, I suppose.

metalfrogstudios73

You definitely should not hide the fact that you have used images under CC. The best advice is to put a note in the footer on every page of the site where the images appear and make sure you state the source of the images. Sometimes a link back may be required but it depends on the individuals licence request.

Tip: If you know how to develop a website then put a PHP include file within the site and this will mean you can create a file called "footer.php" and this file can be uniform across the whole site. This method saves time and means if you change a footer link or text, it is changed for every page.

Good luck!